When Chen Longzheng's rescue operation was still unknown to Xiao Ruxun, Xiao Ruxun was in the military base in the mountains of Northern Burma, worrying about the manufacturing of Mini bombs.
Xiao Ruxun clearly knew that in the current situation of this era, the musket infantry equipped with rifled flintlocks and Mini bombs was all he could do. With the current production capacity of the artisanal industrial system, this was the limit of what he could achieve. If he wanted to go further, it would be something that could only be achieved in the modern era of the mechanical industry with the assistance of modern chemistry.
No matter how confident Xiao Ruxun was, he would not be so confident that he could carry out an industrial revolution in Daming in the 25th year of the Wanli calendar. That was just a dream. He definitely did not think that he could do it. In fact, the current military base with more than 2000 craftsmen and 5000 soldiers was already at the top of the scale and level of technology in this era.
Xiao Ruxun had gathered a large number of craftsmen from Europe and trained his own senior blacksmiths to form a production line that could be said to be this era's top handmade firearms production line. They were currently producing the era's top musket infantry equipment. They could produce rifled flintlocks. Although the production rate was not high, it was definitely enough for the personal guards to use.
Currently, most of the troops were still using cheap and easy to mass-produce matchlocks. The quality of the matchlocks of the Zhennan Army was also far superior to the muskets used by the Ming Army. This was not difficult, as it could be done with a mature handmade production line. Drawing the rifled flintlock was also not difficult, as experienced craftsmen could also do it. However, if it was to make Mini bombs, then the difficulty would be much greater.
Xiao Ruxun absolutely did not think that Mini bombs could be made by making a mold and melting a piece of lead in a few moments. He also did not think that the inspiration from the blowdart, such as the ancient weapon, would be convenient for craftsmen to make Mini bombs.
If that was the case, the European soldiers would not have to bring hammers to the battlefield for more than a hundred years. The Europeans would also not have struggled to create Mini bombs after almost 300 years of rifled rifles. As a result, Mini bombs were only used for 20 years before being eliminated by rear-loading rifles.
Making a Mini bomb required the tight cooperation of an entire production line. Not to mention other things, the absolute precise size was a hurdle that the current old craftsmen could not surpass. The specialty of Mini bombs was to dig a groove at the end of the bullet so that when the gunpowder burned, it would impact the end of the bullet and cause the bullet to expand to fit the internal rifling.
This involved the problem of the inner diameter of the barrel and the diameter of the bullet. They had to make it within the limited size so that when the gunpowder burned, the lead could expand to fit the internal rifling, thus achieving a smooth shooting. If the bullet's diameter was too small, it was no different from a musket. If it was too small, wouldn't it explode?
Then making bullets absolutely could not be done by hand. Instead, they had to use molds. Making a barrel also could not be done by hand. They also had to use molds.
The production cost of a rifled flintlock was more than three times that of a musket. Xiao Ruxun had calculated the economic accounts. The cost of making a musket was about four taels of silver, while the cost of making a rifled flintlock was more than twelve taels of silver.
What did twelve taels of silver mean at this time?
Ximen Qingxuan used sixteen taels of silver to buy a black lacquer bed with gold embroidered curtains, a table, chairs, and embroidered cloths, all neatly arranged.
The book 'Jin Ping Mei' was written in the Ming Dynasty. Three years ago, when Xiao Ruxun led his troops to the south, he heard a rumor in the Zhejiang region that an improper book was secretly popular among some wealthy families. It was called 'Mei'. Presumably, it was' Jin Ping Mei '. The prices of the book were the prices of this period, so it was easy to understand.
Ximen Qingxuan used sixteen taels of silver to buy a three-piece bed set and a bedroom furniture set. He didn't know which one of the three 'Jin Ping Mei' would be placed there. But Ximen Qingxuan was very extravagant. In order to hide a mistress in his golden house, this three-piece bed set and bedroom furniture set must be high-grade goods.
A whole set of high-grade goods that could fill a woman's room cost sixteen taels of silver. And this was still in the Southeast coastal area where the consumption level was high.
Xiao Ruxun bought a rifled flintlock for twelve taels of silver.
This meant that the more than three hundred rifled flintlocks in Xiao Ruxun's hands were enough for Ximen Qingxuan to collect a hundred sets of Jin Ping Mei's three 'Jin Ping Mei's' three 'Jin Ping Mei's' golden house to slowly play with. This was not throwing money, this was burning money. It was like throwing hard-earned money into a furnace of more than one thousand eight hundred degrees Celsius.
Xiao Ruxun collected a lot of business taxes. He didn't have to pay taxes to the imperial court. The imperial court also didn't collect his business taxes. He also did food business and arms business with the Southeast Asian countries. Basically, he monopolized the arms and food business. He also controlled the right to formulate the rules of the trade game. He made a lot of money.
Last year, Xiao Ruxun's Burma Town had a revenue of two million taels of silver. That was a pile of shiny silver. Xiao Ruxun conservatively estimated that after the European trade route was opened, it wouldn't be a problem to double this amount.
The total annual revenue of the Daming Dynasty was only ten million taels of silver. This was under the premise that there was almost no business taxes. After going through Old Zhu's pain in the ass place to keep enough for his own use, and the rest was escorted to the capital. The imperial court only received two to three million taels of silver. This meant that the current revenue of Xiao Ruxun could already be considered brothers with the national treasury of the Daming Dynasty.
Even with such strong financial resources, under the circumstances that it was easy to raise the navy and the army, the manufacture of rifled flintlocks and the development of mini bullets still made Xiao Ruxun feel strained. Money after money was thrown into these projects. He searched for mines all over Burma and constantly recruited a large number of people to mine the mines. Xiao Ruxun even thought of finding an excuse to exterminate the indigenous tribes. Only then was he able to barely maintain the status quo.
The lead bullets weren't that painful. Once they were deformed, they could be picked up and sent back to the furnace to be remade. The consumption wasn't that great. However, using the most advanced Su Steel Method to make steel was still not an easy task. The Su Steel Method was essentially a continuation and improvement of the Steel Filling Method. Although it was much more efficient than the Steel Filling Method, in order to meet the needs of the army, the output of the blacksmiths had to catch up.
In short, Xiao Ruxun's military base was currently in a state of overloading. Every blacksmith and soldier who did odd jobs were very tired. If it weren't for the face of the high salary, the blacksmiths would really be unhappy. They had more than once asked Xiao Ruxun to recruit more people. Xiao Ruxun had also recruited blacksmiths from various places along the coast. However, if he recruited too many blacksmiths, it would be easy for the eyes and ears of the imperial court to detect it. Xiao Ruxun was not willing to take this risk.
He could only pay for the blacksmiths himself.
It wasn't the time for war yet. It was just that Xiao Ruxun had high requirements for the soldiers' training. Every day, they had to shoot to maintain their shooting speed. They also had to replenish the stocks of guns in case of emergencies. Anyway, in the past three years, he had raised his own army and governed the land. Only then did Xiao Ruxun truly understand what it meant to fight a war with money.
Only then did he understand why there were only a few rounds of ammunition per person in China during the War of Resistance. Only now did he understand why the Beiyang Navy and the Japanese had a lot of empty cartridges, low-quality cartridges, and even waste cartridges filled with sand. Modern war was all about money. The Empress Dowager had used all the money to repair the garden. Where would she get the money to make the cartridges?
Every day, Xiao Ruxun watched as the army practiced their formation shooting. Although he had a serious expression on his face when he inspected them, his heart was bleeding non-stop. All of this was money, all of it was silver! These 35,000 soldiers were elites that he had used a few million taels of silver to nurture. If they couldn't fight against 10 enemies at the same time, then he would be letting down those few million taels of silver!
Thinking about how Old Zhu had proudly declared that he had raised millions of soldiers without using a single grain of rice from the people. In the end, after more than a hundred years, his millions of soldiers had been turned into sieves by the bankrupt farmers in the southeast and the Japanese Ronin. A few dozen Japanese Ronin could even fight their way to the city of Nanjing. This was the result of his boasting. Compared to him, Xiao Ruxun was simply a poor man.
The financial income seemed to be a lot, but when you calculated it, the fact that this impoverished and barren land, Myanmar, had been able to reach this point was because there really weren't a few taels of silver that could be used for personal purposes.
Building a city? Building houses and villages? Repairing roads? Repairing irrigation works? Widening rivers? Buying farming tools and seeds? You want to buy cattle? Recruiting craftsmen? Did the craftsmen need silver to support them? Did the miners who were recruited to do hard labor also need to pay the tribal chiefs?
The rest was to raise soldiers. The army needed cold weapons, guns, and cannons. These were all silver. The navy needed to build and maintain ships. The official merchant caravans also needed to build larger and heavier merchant ships that could better adapt to the needs of long-distance voyages. The rations of the army needed to be guaranteed, right? The officials under him needed to be paid, right? The maintenance of the administrative system from the city to the villages needed to be invested, right? Free literacy education needed to be invested, right?
Calculating it this way, how many of the two million taels of silver would fall into his mouth?
He wished that one tael of silver could be divided into ten portions. These years, he didn't even dare to eat meat in big mouthfuls. Every meal was a small bowl of green leafy vegetables, a small bowl of meat, a small bowl of soup, and a large bowl of rice. Sometimes, he would steam one or two potatoes and eat pickled vegetables. Otherwise, he would only gnaw on a few pieces of corn. He was so bitter that he didn't seem like a marquis.
Delicious food was left for his wife, children, and father. He provided them with good food and drinks. He also provided Yuan Huang and the others with enough ice cubes and sumptuous meals. As for himself, he made do with it. Other than eating dinner with his family, he didn't dare to eat breakfast and lunch in front of them. He was afraid that the officials under him would know about his poverty. The good food was left for the guests to show off, and he couldn't even bear to drink a bowl of iced mung bean soup in private.
Only the boss knew that daily necessities were expensive!
The military factory required at least one hundred thousand taels of silver. He couldn't afford to be extravagant, so he used Chen Longzheng as the director of the Audit Office. He wanted to increase the income and reduce the expenditure. He was good at increasing the income, so he couldn't be good at not reducing the expenditure.
Therefore, he found three salted fishes with minor problems. He could have just brushed it off, but he didn't expect that he would overdo it. Chen Longzheng made it into a shocking case. The salted fishes were packaged as big sharks, and when he chopped them with a knife, blood flowed like a river, shocking the entire Myanmar officialdom.
Not only that, this guy even went to the mayor's wife to buy a box of rouge that was worth less than one tael of silver to increase the couple's romance. He had to grab the husband and ask him all sorts of questions, asking where the money came from, whether it was legal, whether it was obtained through embezzlement, or was he going to embezzle it?
He thought that rouge and cosmetics were all made of gold.
Therefore, after working for three months, Xiao Ruxun couldn't stand the crying of the officials below him, so he asked Chen Longzheng to return to his old profession of diplomacy. However, this disturbance really cleaned up the entire Myanmar officialdom. The Myanmar officialdom, which was originally as pure as a white lotus, was now even more white and shiny, and could be said to be spotless. This helped Xiao Ruxun save a lot of expenses.
It was better to save as much money as possible. Climbing the technological tree was not something that ordinary people could do. Without the support of the government, if you wanted to do it alone, you could do it. However, if you wanted to promote it to the whole country, that would be a pipe dream. For any invention, from the time it was invented to the time it was promoted to the whole country, without the support of the government, was it possible?
In the past few years, Xiao Ruxun had also been constantly encouraging those craftsmen to invent and innovate, thinking of ways to increase productivity. He stipulated that those who invented and innovated to increase productivity or reduce consumption would be rewarded with a large amount of silver. Therefore, these craftsmen also put forward all sorts of effective suggestions, and the silver flowed out like water.
The more she earned, the more she spent. Her daily expenses were already an astronomical figure, and now she was thinking about creating Mini Bombs that surpassed the times. Xiao Ruxun was really a little mentally and physically exhausted. She thought that no matter what, she had to come up with more income points to add a little more vigor when climbing the technology tree.
When the action report sent by Chen Longzheng was delivered to Xiao Ruxun's desk in advance, Xiao Ruxun had just approved a sum of 300,000 taels of silver for the military factory's daily operating expenses. He was bleeding from the heartache, but in the end, when he opened the action report, he was immediately shocked.
Chen Longzheng was really a weak version of Huo Qubing, a real troublemaker. Wherever he went, he would make some big news!
One trip to Europe, and he became the trend of the times. One trip to Siam, and he became the public idol and friend of women. One trip to the Philippines, and he caused a lawsuit of hundreds of people's lives. My goodness, he led the army to conquer the Western Continent, annihilated them, and built a temple to comfort Mr. Li's soul in heaven …
What? Ricci was dead?
Xiao Ruxun hurriedly continued to read. Only then did he see that this guy thought that Ricci had been killed, and that it was the other side who fired first. In his grief and indignation, he ordered the army to fight back and killed all 200 Spanish soldiers. He even cut off their heads and built a temple, saying that he wanted to comfort Ricci's soul in heaven. In the end, Ricci fell and came back to life. It turned out that he had fainted from being scared by the enemy's gun, so Chen Longzheng thought that he was dead.
Ricci, who had fainted on the ship and only woke up, described how he tried his best to stop the fight from happening, but the other side's officer was too unruly. He actually shot at him and fainted, causing an irreversible incident. He was guilty, and he wanted to apologize to Xiao Ruxun and the Pope …
After Xiao Ruxun finished reading the whole story, he was deeply proud of the stroke of genius that he had sent Chen Longzheng out to do diplomacy.
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